Struggle to Forever: a friends to lovers duet

by Lilliana Anderson

  “Does that mean what I think it means?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Well… I do… I’m… I’m just sorry.”

  “You’re sorry? Exactly what am I to this guy? Am I the stock? Is his stock girls?”

  “No.” His brow furrows as his eyes shine with water, and he shakes his head. “Yes.”

  “Shit Braden!” I hiss, standing up and pacing the room. “How could you not tell me we were mixed up in something like this? I thought we were selling the IDs to some backyard operation and buying our drugs from the same kind of thing. This is… this is way more than I’m OK with. I don’t want to be a hooker, or… fuck…am I supposed to be a sex slave?” There’s panic in my voice. “Braden. You have to get me out of this. I can’t be stock. Why does stock even get low when it’s people? What is he doing with them?” I feel the need to climb out of my own skin. I can’t handle this.

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  I lean forward and place my hands on my knees and try to calm my breath. “Well, what are our options?”

  “What kind of options are you talking about? The ones where we live or the ones where we die?”

  “Where we live obviously!”

  “You go to him on Monday.”

  “That’s it? That’s my only option?”

  “Well, that or we run.”

  “OK. So we run. What happens if he catches us?”

  “There’s no if. He will catch us, and when he does, we’re dead.”

  Twenty-Six

  When we get home, I’m completely numb and lie straight on the sofa, not even bothering to wash off my makeup and get changed.

  “Paige,” Braden says quietly. “Come and sleep in the bed. It’s more comfortable.”

  My eyes slide towards him, but I don’t move my head. I just glare.

  “No funny business. I just want to hold you…if that’s OK.”

  As upset as I am with him for blindsiding me the way he has, I need to be held. I need to be held so fucking bad. So I stand up and wander over to his bed, unspeaking. I lie facing the window and focus on the glow coming in from the street lights.

  Braden slides in behind me and wraps his arm around my middle, holding me to him.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispers, pressing a kiss to my shoulder. I don’t say anything to him, this hopelessness in my veins like lead. Even my mind is numb.

  I should have known this couldn’t last. Once again, I started to feel like I had a home, and once again, it’s being taken away from me. Was my life ever my own?

  “I tried to kill myself once,” I whisper, tears seeping from my eyes and leaking on the pillow. “It was the second time I was kicked onto the street. I thought a man loved me. But he was just using me for sex and drugs. I thought my life was over when he threw me out, so I took all the molly I had on me but I was too chicken shit to swallow. Now I’m here, being sold to some kingpin as stock.” I release a slow breath. “I wish I’d swallowed.”

  “Do you want to die now?”

  I shake my head. “I want to live. But no one wants to let me.”

  Tears roll from my eyes as I continue to stare ahead. I don’t bother to wipe them. I don’t bother to sniff, or blink them away. I just let them fall as if it’s the last of my hope, slowly leaving my body. Never to return.

  The next day, we spend our time together, taking every substance we have available in the house. We’re trying to blank out what we know is about to come.

  It doesn’t help though. More than once, I hope that what I’m doing will make me overdose so I don’t have to wake up on Monday morning. I mix every drug we have. I can end this now. I can leave this world in a state of bliss, the same way I should have in that motel room all those months ago. But when I open my eyes and see the sun streaming in through the windows, I realise it’s Monday, and I’m not that lucky.

  Twenty-Seven

  The day I stopped counting

  Like a lamb being led to slaughter, I follow Braden up the front path of the apartment building where Reggie lives and wait quietly while he presses the intercom, and we get buzzed in.

  As we stand in the elevator on our way up to Reggie’s floor, I turn towards Braden. “I hate you for this.” I glare at him. Anger radiates off me in sickening waves. I still can’t believe I’m in this situation. And worse still, neither of us had the guts to try and get out of it. We’re just doing exactly as we’re told.

  “Sweetheart, I hate me too.”

  The doors ping open, and we step out into the hall and straight up to Reggie’s door.

  Braden knocks twice.

  Dread winds its way through my body, turning my stomach inside out as we wait. The door is opened by a gorgeous looking woman with red hair and heavy makeup. She looks like she’s about to go out somewhere but when she opens the door, I see about four other women, and they’re all dressed to the same standard.

  Her pupils are dilated as she looks me over, completely ignoring Braden as she steps away from the door and goes to stand by Reggie.

  “Right on time,” he says from the dining area. He’s seated at a table surrounded by small packages, boxes and a decent stash of cash as well as some paper work.

  He’s obviously been conducting business.

  He rises from his chair and walks toward us, shakes Braden’s hand, and then hands him a thick envelope.

  “Thanks for bringing her to me,” he says, patting him on the back in a congratulatory fashion. “You can go now.”

  I shoot Braden a glance that I hope says ‘Did he just pay you for me?’ but he won’t meet my eyes. My emotions threaten to get the better of me as I watch Braden leave. What the hell just went down? Was this supposed to happen all along?

  My mind goes crazy as I think about the care Braden took in dressing me for that party on Saturday night. How important it was to him that I looked good and got along with Reggie.

  “Was this a set up all along?” I blurt out.

  The woman who answered the door just laughs.

  “Maxine, get Paige here something to calm her down so she feels more at home,” Reggie instructs her.

  “My pleasure,” she says.

  “I don’t want anything. I’m fine the way I am,” I protest. “Just tell me what’s going on? What am I here for? Ah!” I cry out as a sharp stabbing pain enters my thigh. I look down and see that Maxine has just stabbed me with a needle. Pain radiates around the injection site, as whatever it is she gives me seeps into my muscle tissue. “What did you ju—”

  Twenty-Eight

  Reggie’s ‘girls’—or stock—are a group of drug dependent women. He provides them with everything they could possibly want in return for complete complicity.

  When he breaks a new girl in, he’s careful not to let her high wear off too much while he uses her body to suit his own purposes.

  Reggie enjoys watching his girls with each other, and sometimes with other people. He also enjoys playing out sexual fetishes. I think he must have some sort of playbook somewhere because he asks his girls to do increasingly more difficult things. He seems to like testing their loyalty because the moment one of them says no, he stops giving her drugs.

  The withdrawal is excruciating, and the girl will do anything—anything—to make the pain stop. I know this, because I am now one of them. I’m currently experiencing the pain that goes with withdrawal from whatever it is he’s been injecting me with. The reason? I refused to sit on a bowling pin. I was worried it’d tear me in half.

  I have no idea how much time has passed since Braden brought me here, but while I writhe in pain, locked in a room on my own, time is moving slower than a snail’s pace.

  Eventually it’s too much.

  “Fine!” I scream out. “I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever you want!”

  Twenty-Nine

  “Party, Party, Party!” Maxine sings, skipping along beside me as we follow Reggie out to a waiting limo. “See, I told you if you were good, he’d take you out,” she says quietly i
n my ear.

  Out of all the girls in the house, Maxine has become the closest one to me. It’s not that we talk much, because we’re high most of the time. But we have this quiet bond where we look out for each other. It’s what you need in a situation like ours.

  She took pity on me early on in my stay and coached me on how to behave so Reggie favoured me. Basically, I have to act like I can’t think for myself and say ‘yes’ to everything he asks. It’s not my favourite thing to do, but it makes my life easier, and has its perks.

  Such as tonight. We’re dressed in designer outfits with matching shoes and handbags. To look at us, you would never guess we were drug whores. We look impeccable. The only difference between us and any other woman who dresses the same is that we can’t hold an intelligent conversation. We’re simply too fucked up.

  The three of us huddle in the limo with Maxine and I seated either side of him as he touches us however he pleases.

  “Hey Maxine,” he says after a while. “Hand out the champagne. We need to celebrate.”

  She does as she’s told and starts passing glasses out for us to hold.

  “What are we celebrating, Reggie?” I ask, holding my glass out as Maxine fills it.

  “We’re going to go and see a potential new girl.”

  “Another one?” Maxine whines. She’s only a little older than me at nineteen and has a tendency to pout like a child. But Reggie seems to like it, she’s been his ‘best girl’ for the whole time I’ve been there.

  Reggie squeezes her knee and kisses her neck fondly. “No one could replace you Maxi, or you, Paige,” he says turning to me. “You two are my absolute best. I just want to make sure you don’t get bored. We need someone new to spice things up. You like new playmates too, don’t you?”

  “Of course we do.” I smile, sipping at my champagne. There are already six of us living in a single room. It’s starting to get cramped. But what Reggie wants, Reggie gets. And god help anyone who goes against him.

  We arrive at a nightclub I’ve never been to before. The way people are looking at us as we exit the limo, you’d think we were celebrities. Reggie wraps his arms around the both of us and walks us inside, straight up to the VIP area.

  He orders more champagne and instructs Maxine and I to go and dance while he talks ‘business’ with some guy with dark slicked-back hair who looks a bit like a mobster in his pinstripe suit.

  We move to a vacant piece of floor, knowing he wants to be able to see us, and start to move together. I briefly wonder where the new girl is while I move sensually against Maxine. If I was sober, I think I’d feel foolish right now. A bit like a trained monkey, performing for treats. But I’m not sober. I haven’t been sober since the day I entered Reggie’s apartment. I’m not even sure how old I am now. A year could have passed and I’d have no clue.

  Maxine leans in to kiss me, and I just go with it. I’ve never been into girls, but we’re here to entertain him while he works. After a while, we’re joined by a third girl. We allow her to dance and touch with us without question. This is what Reggie does. He adds ‘more’ to whatever we’re doing. He always wants more.

  It isn’t long before he has us all leaving again with the new girl in tow. He leads us to the waiting limo, grinning broadly after his fresh purchase.

  Once inside, the privacy screens are up, and our designer clothes are shed as he instructs us in his own version of a live show.

  We do as we’re told, including the new girl, despite the fact we don’t even know her name. I’d like to say this was somehow fun, or perhaps erotic in some way. But I can’t. I don’t feel anything anymore. I simply do whatever he says.

  Thirty

  It takes a while, but I open my eyes and sit up on the bed. I’m one part of a mass of bodies. Flashes from the night before flit through my mind. There was a time when I woke from a night like that and felt cheap and dirty, but that’s long gone. I don’t care enough to be upset anymore. I’m numb.

  “Look at Paige,” a girl called Chelsea giggles as she points at my naked body. “She’s so skinny that she looks like one of those starving kids on TV.”

  I walk over to her and grab at her face. “Shut the fuck up.”

  “You’re just jealous because Reggie likes me better than you. He’s not calling you up as much anymore.”

  Chelsea is fairly new. She put up a huge fight when she got here, but now she’s just like the rest of us. Completely dependent, and willing to do anything he asks.

  I grab a fistful of her hair and pull back hard. “You’d better start eating Paige or he’ll get bored with you and toss you out.” She laughs defiantly.

  I curl my lip back and spit in her pretty face. The other girls in the room just look on uncaring, or else they don’t even hear or see.

  “You’re a bitch, Paige,” she says, wiping off her face as she gets up to leave the room.

  I roll my eyes and reach for a silk robe and slip it on my frail body as I scan the group. In the middle of the bed I can see a tuft of red hair where Maxine is still lying, fast asleep.

  “Hey, Maxie,” I call out to her, tying the sash at my waist as I walk back over to the bed, shaking her awake. But she doesn’t stir. “Maxie,” I say again, louder this time.

  “Oh shit,” Jenny, the girl on the bed next to her says. When our eyes meet I know it’s not good, the bottom of my stomach feels like it just dropped out. “She’s cold.”

  “No,” I shriek, rushing to sit next to her. Everyone in the room scatters as I try to lift and shake her. “Wake up damn it. Wake up!”

  Her head rolls from side to side as I shake her about even though I know there’s no point. Her skin is bone cold. Her lips are blue. There isn’t a single piece of life left in her.

  “Reggie!” I screech.

  He appears in the doorway, followed by the other girls. He swears and calls me over to him. Still clutching Maxine in my arms, I shake my head in refusal.

  “I said, come here,” he growls, as he grabs my hair before dragging me out and dumping me on the couch.

  “Stay there,” he commands, a finger pointed in my face like I’m a dog.

  He speaks in soft tones to some of the other men in the apartment. They’re his security and our handlers. They do whatever he asks just like us girls do, but they do it because he pays them.

  One of them walks over to me and grabs me around the waist, dragging me, kicking and screaming to the ‘cool down’ room. I want to know what they’re going to do with her. I want them to call an ambulance. I want them to do something to help.

  “Why am I in here?” I scream. “I haven’t done anything wrong!”

  “You’re becoming a problem. Calm the hell down,” he says as he shuts then locks the door.

  I scream my head off in there, but it makes no difference. The room is completely sound proof.

  Thirty-One

  The day the numbers start back up

  I don’t know how long I spend in the cool down room, but eventually my body is kind enough to let me pass out. When I come to, I’m not at Reggie’s anymore. I’m somewhere else.

  The stench of the room is a mix of rotting garbage and human filth. I look around, and I’m lying on a stained mattress laid on the floor of a large room littered with other filthy mattresses, broken bits of furniture and listless bodies.

  There are a group of people huddled in a corner, passing around a pipe. Am I in a crack den? When I sit up, a sharp pain stabs through my middle.

  “Ow.” I cry out as the pain radiates around to my back and fiercely clenches at my abdomen. I look around me, desperately searching for someone to help me.

  A person, or maybe two, give me a cursory glance, but that’s about it. No one really cares.

  I force myself to stand and weave my way towards the door. I have no idea where I am once I make it outside. The area looks industrial. There’s nothing familiar.

  Clutching at my stomach, I walk until I come to a petrol station. The smell of the gasolin
e is strong in my nostrils as I stumble past people standing by their cars, filling up their tanks.

  I must look a fright, as a woman gasps when she sees me and hisses at her kids to look away.

  When the automatic glass doors open, I step through and freeze as a burst of warmth seeps between my legs. When I look down, there’s a dark stain spreading on my pants. Touching it, I look at my hand. There’s bright red on my fingertips.

  “Are you all right, love?” the cashier asks carefully from behind the counter.

  “I…I…” I stammer. “I think I need an ambulance.”

  Pain rips through my middle, and I cry out from the shock of it, my knees buckling beneath me as I fall to the floor.

  As I lose consciousness, a man’s concerned face appears above me. Slipping away, the last words I hear are, “Be careful, mate. She looks like a druggy. Who knows what diseases she has?”

  Thirty-Two

  People are speaking underwater as a rocking sensation shifts my body. Feebly, I reach my hand up and try to take the thing off my face that’s causing pressure.

  “Leave it alone, love. It’s helping you breathe.”

  I force my eyes to focus so I can make sense of what’s happening. I think I’m in an ambulance. An EMT flicks a light in my eyes, causing me to recoil as he asks me who I am.

  “Paige.” My voice muffles behind the oxygen mask. “Paige Larsen.”

  “OK, Paige. You’re in an ambulance on your way to the hospital. We’re going to take care of you. Do you know how long you’ve been pregnant for?”

  “Pregnant? I’m not…” I mumble, confused. I’m not pregnant.

  “It’s all right. We’re almost there.”

  Pain radiates through my middle again, and I start crying. “Make it stop,” I wail. Why haven’t I died yet?